Moments After
by sparklylulz
Summary: "Missing Sherlock Holmes wasn't like missing any ordinary thing, it wasn't a sudden pain that vanished once the conversation changed its pace- it was a dull but steady ache that lay in his chest." -Watson/Holmes. Set after Game of Shadows. Implied slash.


**a/n: **I've decided to try my hand at the older set of Sherlock and Watson, I hope you enjoy this late night drabble/random thing. I guess it's like pre-slash or slash-that-could-have-been.

**I don't own any of the characters or settings or really anything you may recognize, including e. e. cummings' work. The only things for me to claim here are the mistakes.**

–

_**'moments after'**_

–

"_with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;_

_at moments when the glassy darkness holds_

_the genuine apparition of your smile_

_(it was through tears always)and silence moulds_

_such strangeness as was mine a little while;_

_moments when my once more illustrious arms_

_are filled with fascination, when my breast_

_wears the intolerant brightness of your charms"_

-e. e. cummings.

–

He doesn't cry after he watches his best, although sometimes erratic, friend topple over the edge of a waterfall, the world's most evil man in his clutches. He feels numb, because he's been so sure that Sherlock has died at least fifty times in the past, his mind thinks this is another silly misunderstanding. However, there is nothing silly about the rage of the water rushing in his ear drums and it takes him a few moments to register that if a man were to go over the wall, there could be no feasible way of him surviving.

He doesn't cry on the short train ride home either, because though the detective's death has sunk in, Watson's grief is beyond that of physical release. He bottles everything in his heart and mind, every unsaid word, every miss aimed touch, and shuts himself down in the lonely and drafty train car, losing his own thoughts to the rhythmic noises that kept the engine in motion.

He doesn't cry at Holmes' funeral, mainly because there are so many people there that it makes him a little nauseous. They all want to know how it happened, how _The Great Sherlock Holmes _was finally beaten and John has hardly let himself rethink those events, so the right words get stuck in his throat and all he can say long after everyone's moved on is: "_I don't know, I just miss him_."

Missing Sherlock Holmes was not like missing any ordinary thing, it wasn't a sudden pain that vanished once the conversation changed it's pace, it was a dull but steady ache, akin to the one that John carried in his leg, except this ache lay in his chest and made it hard to breathe, let alone function.

He doesn't cry when he sits down to write out their last adventure together, though it takes him nearly half a year to work up the courage to place his fingers on the keys. There are no tears for this story because the warmth in his very being when it came to the enigmatic other man far out weighed any grief or pain.

He runs into a man in a strange overcoat with an oddly off center nose in the street when he returns home from his honeymoon and it takes a few seconds for Sherlock's disguise to fully register. But John pulls all the fake parts off until only this man, the _only _man, that he's ever truly loved surfaces.

"You followed us didn't you?" He asks, knowing the answer, but not being able to block out the warmth growing from where the ache used to be.

"What kind of best man would I be if I hadn't?" Comes the reply, but the words are laced with a tone of care only ever used when Watson is around.

Watson doesn't shed a tear until he's in bed later that night, with the comfort of knowing Sherlock is one room over, incredibly and fully alive. He sobs to himself, because at least when he thought his best friend was dead he could ignore the odd feelings that sometimes overtook him and caused irrational desires to spring up in his dreams. He cries out of both happiness for the recovery of the strange, aloof, brilliant, and beautiful man, but also out of despair that though he may love Sherlock Holmes until it ripped him apart, John could never have him in any other way than a partner and a best friend.


End file.
